LITMIR.BIZ

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muffins going,” she said in her Alabama drawl.

      “I thought I was your muffin, baby.”

      This from Charlene’s husband, Al, the photographer who’d taken the pictures on the walls, who despite being forty himself had never outgrown his horny twenties. Medium height, built like the boxer he’d once been, he waggled a brow and grinned.

      They’d been married forever, had in fact raised two kids while they’d still been kids themselves, but they had empty-nest syndrome now, and were currently revisiting their honeymoon days—meaning they talked about sex often, had sex often, and talked about it some more.

      “People come here for my muffins,” Charlene said, and smacked Al’s chest.

      “I love your muffins.”

      “You’re just kissing up now.”

      This brought out a big, hopeful grin. “No, but I’d like to.” He shifted close, put his hands on Char’s hips. “Kiss up, and then down…”

      Char shot Mel a long look. “Men are dogs.”

      Mel tended to agree with that assessment but she knew enough to keep her tongue. “I’ll get the oven fixed.”

      “Oh, honey, that’d be great. I know you’re swamped and this is the last thing you need.”

      Yep, on the list of things Mel didn’t need, the oven going on the blink fell right behind a hole in her head. “We need the oven. I’ll get it fixed ASAP.”

      “Good, because if I keep disappointing the customers, we aren’t going to be able to pay our rent this month. Sally will freak.”

      Ah, yes, the elusive Sally.

      Sally was the owner of North Beach Airport, and everyone’s boss, from fueling to maintenance to hangaring. Mel herself rented space from Sally for Anderson Air and in return for a lower fee managed the whole airport for Sally. Since Sunshine Café happened to be one of the few profitable segments of North Beach, the broken oven fell into Mel’s already-overflowing pot of responsibilities. She pulled the radio off the clip on her belt to call their fix-it guy, who sometimes fixed things, and sometimes didn’t. Mostly didn’t. “I’ll get Ernest.”

      Charlene sighed.

      “Yeah, yeah.” Mel brought the radio up to her mouth. “Ernest, come to the café, please.”

      No answer, which was not a big surprise. No one was sure exactly how old Ernest was but he’d been at North Beach as long as Mel could remember. According to other sources, he’d been around since the dawn of time. Only thing was, he was grumpy as an old goat and was rarely anywhere he should be when Mel needed him.

      Like now.

      “He’s probably rescuing a spider.” To Al’s credit, he said this with a straight face.

      Ernest loved spiders. He actually carried around a special species book in his back pocket so that he could characterize each and every spider he came across, and here just off the Santa Barbara coast, in the shadows of the Santa Ynez Mountains, he came across a lot. The only thing he loved more than spiders was computers. The man, strange as it seemed, was a computer god. He probably could have gotten a job anywhere for more money, but undoubtedly he couldn’t nap on the job anywhere else so he stayed at North Beach.

      “Ernest,” Mel said again into the radio. “Come in, please. Ernest, come in.”

      “No need to shout, missy.”

      Mel nearly jumped out of her skin at the low, craggily, grumpy voice behind her. Ernest stood there, all five feet of him packed with attitude, from his steel-toed boots to his greasy trousers and long-sleeved, button-down plaid, to his bad comb-over, which was rumpled now, telling her he’d been sleeping in the storage closet again. The crease on his cheek that resembled the side of a can of oil was a dead giveaway. “The oven’s down,” she told him.

      “Eh?” He cupped a hand to his bad ear. “Speak up!”

      Mel would have fired his curmudgeonly ass a long time ago except she couldn’t afford anyone else. “Oven! Broken!”

      “You never talk loud enough,” he grumbled. “Sally’s the only one who talks loud enough.”

      Ernest hadn’t actually spoken directly to Sally in years, but arguing with the man was like betting against the house.

      Never going to win.

      “Can you fix the oven?” she yelled in his good ear.

      “I’ll fix the damn oven soon as I fix the damn fuel pump!”

      Mel’s stomach dropped. “What’s wrong with the gas pump?” Muffins they could live without. Getting fuel into their customers’ aircrafts, some of which landed here daily for the fuel alone, they could not.

      “Nothing I can’t handle.” Ernest was already walking away, his pants slipping down because he had no hips to hold them on. He stopped, hitched them up, then kept moving.

      The radio squawked with the announcement of an unscheduled plane arriving in twenty minutes. Mel waited for one of the linemen, Ritchie or Kellan, to respond to the news, but neither did. Once again she lifted the radio to her lips and called for her employees.

      No response.

      “Gotta love those brain-dead college students,” Char said.

      Mel resisted the urge to smack her own forehead with the radio. “If those two are in the back hangar getting high again, I’m going to kill them.”

      “We’re falling apart at the seams.” Charlene hugged Mel. “Look, honey, you’ve got your hands full. I’ll go see what I can wrangle up without the oven, ’kay?”

      “I’ll get on it,” Mel promised her just as the Poison CD ended.

      For one blessed moment silence reigned before a new CD clicked on. Journey. “I just wish we could give this place the makeover it needs,” Char yelled over the music.

      Mel wished that, too. They were making ends meet, and they all had jobs, two really good things, but no one was getting rich, that was for sure.

      Not that she wanted to be rich, but comfortable would be nice…

      Al followed his wife into the kitchen, his hand sliding down her back to squeeze her ass.

      “Albert Edward Stone!” Charlene said in her most Southern-genteel voice. “If you think that instead of cooking muffins, I’m going to ‘cook’ with you—”

      “Come on, just a quickie—”

      “That’s what you got just last night!”

      “Hey, that wasn’t a quickie, that was some of my best work!”

      Mel covered her ears and walked away. She didn’t need the reminder that everyone was getting quickies and she was not. So it’d been a long time for her, so what? People could live without sex.

      Or so the rumor went.

      “Mel? Mel, are you around here somewhere?”

      At Dimi’s voice drifting through the lobby from the front receptionist desk, Mel changed direction and headed that way, wondering, what now?

      Dimi Wilmington sat perched on the edge of her desk, head tilted as she studied the view out the window of sweeping coastlines bisected by the magnificent Santa Ynez Mountains and a typical low-lying morning fog. Willowy, with legs long past the legal limit, Dimi had a body and face that could launch a thousand ships, make the fat lady sing, and put grown men on their knees to worship at her altar.

      She used them to her full advantage, too, rarely coming across a man she didn’t like—which probably explained the new whisker burn along her jaw.

      Terrific. Everyone was getting lucky except Mel.

      It was said she and Dimi were

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